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The new rules, although mostly to increase pace of play, are there primarily to make the product more watchable.
People don't tune in to watch small ball bunting and banjo hitting. They dig the long ball. And they don't want to wait 10 minutes for it while the pitcher and hitter fidget. The teams will still find ways to use gamesmanship to outfox opponents, but not at the expense of the product selling itself.
If you recall, baseball almost killed itself twice before. Once with the Black Sox scandal. And Babe Ruth's prolific power saved baseball then. And then again with the players' strike. And, again, the steroid era saved it with all the steroid induced home run power.
None of this was done to make devoted baseball fans placated. They weren't going anywhere. It was for the casual fans who cannot even name 5 players on their home team. They buy just as much beer and auto insurance as the devoted fans. Other sports have benefited from these sorts of changes and there's no reason baseball should not benefit.
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